Circuit
by muckraker
Summary: The problem with modern technology is that it creates a very lonely world.


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**Circuit **

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Myth: the hour between two and three a.m. is the true witching hour, during which hauntings and demons are at their strongest. Nothing ever happened then, not even when Makoto walked home from her office building, even though she saw enough shady people hanging around, all leers and cigarette smoke and the cloying reek of liquor. There was terror, but it was all human terror.

So, fact: there is no such thing as ghosts or demons.

Also fact: Makoto should know better. She did not believe in ghosts or demons, but she was beginning to believe in very, very bad luck. When she stayed late, finishing lines of code that should have been done a week ago, when all her office mates finally had to leave because it was late and she was alone in the whole building, her eyes aching from having to stare at a computer screen for hours and hours until it looked as though everything had little scan lines running through it and on top of everything, and her phone had a virus that she highly suspected had come to her from her little brother, it all could have shaped up to a simple, bad day.

But bad days had a wonderful guarantee of, eventually, ending. Bad days did not evolve into a series completely surreal nightmares that started off kind of innocently, like the weird feeling she'd gotten as she sat at her computer, an empty coffee can pressed to her aching head, or the fact that the security guard seemed to have disappeared sometime during her shift, or the weird-looking drug dealer (who had long, shaped nails and wore red makeup and rags that could have been lovely, expensive clothes, once) that hung around the building just as she was about to leave. The first was this awful lethargy, like she was getting the flu, and a strange coldness all around that just made her feel very alone, which made sense, considering the building was empty. The second was mostly just odd.

The third was a different problem.

It became a strange and alarming problem when he'd come inside (because again, fact: Makoto should know better, even when a perfectly lucid person asked very politely if he may have some water, and despite the fact that he was a druggie, she couldn't quite shut the door in his face) and _stayed _inside, despite all her efforts to politely ask him to leave and her near-hysterical threats to call the police, and especially when she began to suspect that he wasn't a drug-addict, but just veritably insane.

She was drawing herself to her full height (which, admittedly, was helped by her high heels) and insisting that "No, I'm very sorry, but--" and the drug dealer looked very much as though he was laughing at her, his eyes moving over the closed office doorways around them, when there was a crash overhead.

She froze, her stomach twisting, and then she balled her hands into fists and squared her shoulders. "You--you stay here," she ordered, her cheeks pink, and she made her way to the stairwell door at the end of the hall, next to the elevator.

"Ah, Yamamoto-san," the drug dealer called after her, and she very much regretted stammering out her name to him in surprise. "I do not think...."

She had her mouth open to snap that it really didn't matter what he thought, and then she leaned into the door and straight ahead, slumped against the cinder block wall, was the security guard. There was a black stain all around and beneath him, seeping into the walls and floor, soaking into his flesh as though he was made of paper. His hands were crooked up into claws and close to his face. The tracts of torn flesh where he had dug his fingernails into his cheeks were black with clotted blood.

Makoto turned and slumped to her knees, holding herself up by the door. She held one hand to her mouth and sucked in desperate breath after desperate breath, feeling as though she was going to be very, very sick. A sickly sweet, cloying smell crept around the edge of the door where she held it ajar, and she scrambled away, her legs weak.

There were soft footfalls before her, and she looked up to see the drug dealer. "That--" She gulped air. "It--you, that was _you_--" She gagged a little and held her hand to her mouth again.

"Of course it wasn't," the dealer said, sounding miffed. He cast his gaze around absently. "I could not have done that."

"Then...." She took a deep breath and pushed herself to her feet, wobbling. She stabbed her finger at the call-button for the elevator. "Then there's someone else here."

The drug dealer gave a soft affirmative and looked back down the length of the hall. "I believe something is coming, Yamamoto-san," he said quietly.

"Don't be ridiculous," she snapped. "Whoever it is is upstairs. We would have heard someone down here." The elevator hummed as it came closer, and finally, the doors slid open.

"Not someone," the dealer said. "Something." Makoto didn't move, staring at him, but he was focused on the long stretch of hallway that led to the door. The elevator rang its bell and the doors began to close, and then there was a great hum that resonated through the whole hall, a vibration so intense that she could hear the glass from the outside windows rattling. Lights at the end of the hallway began to shudder and flicker off, and finally, the drug dealer moved, edging his feet back. "Go," he said, his voice barely audible over the hum of metal and glass.

Makoto hit the call button again and the doors slid open. She stumbled inside the elevator and watched, wide-eyed, as the darkness came closer. The drug dealer stepped backward into the elevator and she pressed the door-close button. As the doors slid shut, the blackness beyond rushed forward like a great wave, rippling and thundering end over end like a sentient thing.

She flinched back, raising her arms before her, but no crash against the doors came. She looked up and met her reflection's eyes, wide and horrified, shadows deep in her face. She swallowed and leaned back, willing her pulse to calm. To her right, the drug dealer was crouched, his tattered-looking bag on the floor in front of him. He sorted through its contents and peered at this or that, ignoring her completely. She drew another calming breath and reached forward to push the button for the next floor up.

Nothing happened. She bit her lip and pressed the button again, and then looked up to meet her reflection's eyes again.

Her reflection in the elevator-door slid, dripped down the contours of the metal like melting wax, and Makoto saw her own face distort and warp into something that looked like a gaping, soundless scream. She made a soft, involuntary sound, a little whimper that she couldn't stop from escaping her throat, and she pressed herself against the back corner of the elevator so hard that her shoulders hurt.

The drug dealer looked at her curiously, still rummaging in his bag. "Do you feel faint, Yamamoto-san?" His voice was so casual, as if he was asking about the weather.

"A bit," she managed, breathless. Her chest hurt, too, like she had been running for miles and her lungs were about to burst. She leaned her head back against the wall and concentrated very hard on breathing. From the corner of her eye, she could see the reflections on the door still twisting and knotting, moving like water. They flowed up, bleeding into the corners and into the seam where the wall met the ceiling...and the light began to dim. Her breath became shaky again as she stared at the elevator's light, its bulb flickering audibly.

"Ah," she said. "Sir..." She didn't look down at him, but she could tell that he had stopped moving. When he didn't answer, she cleared her throat, and he shushed her softly. She drew a deep breath and held it, staring at the warm little light; it flicked once, twice more, and then it stopped, its light strong. Her heart banging painfully in her chest, she slowly let out her breath...and the light shuddered and failed altogether, plunging them into darkness.

She swallowed hard and almost gagged. "A-ah, drug dealer...san..."

"It's all right," he said softly, his voice low. "Sit with me, Yamamoto-san."

"I--I don't think...no, thank you." Her fingers curled around the bar braced to the wall, and she steadied her feet.

"I think you would rather not be so close to the wall." When she let go and pushed herself away with a little _oh, _he gave a little laugh and reached up, touching the tips of his fingers to her wrist. "Here, Yamamoto-san. Sit."

She hesitated, and then stepped out of her high heels and knelt, grabbing up her shoes and clutching them in her lap. She could feel the drug dealer close on her left, but she couldn't quite pick him out of the darkness. She rubbed at her wrist where his cold fingers had brushed her skin, and she wondered how he could have seen her. He was rummaging in his bag again--something clinked and rattled, there was a muffled chiming like bells, something that smelled like musty wood and the odd, chemical stink of sulfur. "I am going to make a light," he said.

She jumped. "You what?"

"Please don't be alarmed, Yamamoto-san," he said absently.

There was the strike of a match, and she had her mouth open to protest that they were in an _elevator, _he couldn't _do _that, and then the light flared close to his face, and he shielded it with his hand and touched it to the wick of a candle before him, and the little space filled with flickering light and they were surrounded with darkness, utter and complete, and it roiled and frothed and reached for them with fingers tendrils claws.

(And she could feel it like death and pain and _regret, _there was sadness and it made her hurt deep, deep inside. There were details in the darkness--a huddled figure, a tangle of cables and wires and bolts and blades--and an awful, cold loneliness. Silence pressed in, heavy and unforgiving, and it felt very much like sinking.)

A hand gently shook her shoulder, and she jerked and looked up, her breath coming fast and shallow, her hands clutched to her chest. She met the drug dealer's eyes, the candle flickering between them, and she forced out, "What is it?" She very carefully avoided the blackness that churned around them, watching his glittering eyes.

He blinked at her, slowly, and then turned to his bag and the things spread over it: bells, a few glittering trinkets, scraps of thin paper. "Tell me, Yamamoto-san," he began softly. "What is your job here?"

"My--job?" He didn't answer, and she swallowed a few times, her breathing beginning to calm. "I'm a-a programmer. We write the code for the phones."

He lifted one of the scraps of paper between two long fingers and blew on it. "And what," he said, "do you do?" He shifted and held the paper over her knees. She started to reach for it, but he shook his head and just looked expectantly at her.

"I..." The makeup on his face was red like slashes of blood, but his eyes were a clear, clear blue. She leaned back and wrung her hands. "I work on the abstraction layers." He nodded, smiling a little, and she shifted uneasily, but she could not look away. "We write the firmware and--and fix the bugs. Without our abstraction, none of it would--" She froze as the paper's edges blackened and curled inward, streaks of red and orange tracing over its surface even as it crumbled into ash. "What--what does that--"

"Hold out your hand, please, Yamamoto-san." He reached for his things again and picked up the little trinket. She stared at it and didn't move, and he finally reached for her as well, his fingers gentle against her hand. He patiently arranged her fingers, and placed the trinket on the point of her index finger. He held it there and met her eyes again. "And what has your work done?"

"What?" She felt as though she couldn't hear him correctly, as though the elevator was filling with cotton or the air was turning to water.

"Every action humans may take plucks the strings of fate. Ripples made on one shore affect another." He squeezed her hand gently. "What ripples have you made?"

"What--my...we program _phones._" Her breath sounded like a sob. "We haven't affected anything. We've--we make people's lives easier. We create communication. That's what we do."

"Yamamoto-san." He held her hand steady. "It seems to me that you have done just the opposite." She opened her mouth, but he shook his head. "To me, it seems as though you have created a very lonely world." He gave a little smile and released the trinket. It chimed, a clear sound that cut through that suffocating darkness, and it listed sickly to the side, dipping toward her right. She held her breath, watching it, but it did not steady, and it toppled off her finger and fell to the floor, the candlelight sliding over its edges.

The drug dealer cleared his throat. "Yamamoto-san, what is in your pocket?"

She pulled her hand from his grasp and felt the familiar weight in her coat. "It's just my phone." She darted a glance back at him, and he opened his hand and bowed his head. She fumbled along the edge of her jacket and when she slid her hand inside and brushed hard plastic, her fingers went cold. She thought she could hear herself gasp something, and her vision dimmed. She could hear the drug dealer saying her name sharply, and then there was a weight pressing against her side, and his long fingers were pulling her hand from her pocket.

When the phone clattered to the floor, it had one of his strips of paper wrapped around it. As she watched dazedly, those designs traced their way over it, first orange, then red, burning like an ember. She expected it to fall to ash like the other, but the lines just ran like blood and locked into place. She realized, all at once, that she was leaning most of her weight into the drug dealer's hand, her hair sliding out of its neat knot. When she hastily pushed herself back, her hands shaking, he let her, and just spared an absent glance as he reached for the phone.

The designs over the charm skittered as his fingernails brushed its surface, but nothing happened when he picked it up and peered at it, turning it over and over in his hands. Makoto watched him, indignation curling in the pit of her stomach. "That's...that's mine," she said, feeling stupid.

He glanced at her again and then gave the phone another curious look. "There is something inside," he said quietly.

"I know." He looked at her again, and this time his attention was centered. She shifted a little. "It has a virus. Its--its operating system was having problems, so I locked it."

He gave a mirthless little laugh. "Ah." He smiled, and his teeth looked like fangs. "I see. Yamamoto-san, would you be so kind as to, ah...unlock it?" He extended his hand, tucking his sleeve out of the way with the other. He looked up at her through his eyelashes. "Please."

She reached out, and hesitated, her hand in midair. "Why?"

"It," he looked up and to the side, and she focused on that awful, shifting black around them, "wants what is inside this. It reaches for a part of itself."

"And...you want me to--help it?" She pulled her hand back and knotted her fingers. "I--can't do that! Why..."

He smiled again, but he did not show his teeth this time. "Do not worry," he said, bowing his head. "I will protect you, Yamamoto-san. It will not touch you." The candlelight cast jerky shadows over his face, the fall of his ashen hair. She lifted her face to the darkness above, roiling like a sea, and breathed a prayer. When she brought her gaze back down, she caught a glimpse of his charms on the floor all around them, and she didn't remember seeing him put them there.

Taking a deep breath, she reached out and tapped the keypad, her fingers knowing their way despite the charm pressed flat over the plastic. The screen lit, and as her fingers brushed the paper, it singed and burned away, and the air thickened around her again, its weight pressing against her ears and eyes. She steadied her breath and tapped three buttons with shaky fingers, muttering under her breath, "Ma-ko-to."

The drug dealer lifted his head, surprise clear in his eyes, and she blushed and said, "It's my name." The phone's screen suddenly went black, but it was not off: as she watched, it deepened, as though it was the entrance to an endless pit. The last of the charm fell away into ash, and the blackness wavered and writhed in the drug dealer's hand, as if struggling out of its molded form.

"It's a strong name," he said, and flicked his wrist, and that darkness was gone. Around them, the walls swirled and churned, like a pool of water with a massive creature in it. The drug dealer pushed himself to his feet and lifted his face. There was a sound like thunder, and the blackness was suddenly very bright, as though bright points of light were shining through its substance. The floor trembled, and their candle fell and snuffed out. "I know you," the drug dealer said, staring into that strange light. "Yurei." There was a sharp, singing bell-sound, and he turned to look at Makoto.

"You might want to get behind me, Yamamoto-san," he said, his lips curling in a smile. "Things will become a bit rough."

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I may come back to this. I may never come back to this. WHO KNOWS. Written for the fic/art-a-thon on the Mononoke LJ community. This just isn't meant to be a short fic. Title and general concept is a blatant reference to one of my favorite J-Horror movies of all time, Kairo.


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